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Within the halls of the London College of Communication, makers were separated by categories into different studios. We had lots to look at and admire, however Raspberry Pi’s and 3D printers, not surprisingly took centre stage.

I don’t intend to talk about everything that happened, just a few things that really made an impression on me.

One 3D printer that caused me to take a second glance, and a third, and a fourth, and a chat with the creator, was the 3DR.
The 3DR is an inverted delta-bot style 3D printer that is constructed mainly out of 3D printed parts. Because of the simple design it seems to me that it must be must easier to set-up initially as the only areas you need to focus on are how tight the strings/cam belt are, and the position of the 3 arms, of course that is only the case if the rod guides are all the same height and parallel to each other.

A 3D printing company caught my eye as we wandered around because of their impressive printed objects and nicely build RepRap printers. Active 3D is based in Tunbridge Wells and aim to help introduce schools in the area to the opportunities that are available in 3D Printing. They offer workshops and monthly meetups which aim:

To train people in how to use 3D printers.

To train people how to maintain a 3D printer.

To provide an easy to use instruction manual.

And finally, catering to the more artistic of us, and the thirsty, the Tropism Well could be found in one of the main halls.
The Tropism Well is a drinking fountain with a difference. With a base made up of a 14 litre tank, which can be filled with any beverage, the Well automatically detects the presence of a person and elegantly bow’s its neck, presenting to the honoured person a gift of a perfectly poured serving or a drink, before bringing its neck back up straight as if to observe you enjoying its gift.

After all the festive activities, I have a new case for my Raspberry Pi, the PiBow. Found at pibow.com, it is a durable acrylic layered case for the raspberry Pi. The case offers access to all the ports and the GPIO pins via a ribbon cable.

The PiBow finished and ready to use.

When completed it protects the main board and has engraving on the top and base to mark the function of each port.
Held together by 4 nylon bolts, it is very easy to modify, especially as there are expansion layers available for things like a camera module, VESA mount, and electronic prototyping.

Well last night, in preparation for getting myself a Raspberry Pi I attended the London Raspberry Pi Jam Night at the Mozilla space in London.
I won’t bore everyone with a full write up of the night and instead if you are interested, point you to my good friend The Scientific Moustache’s blog post on the night.

Instead I will be giving you my impression as a newbie at these events.

I arrived early with my friend as he is a co-organiser, and it seemed to be quite a quiet affair.
As people started turning up and getting to work with their projects and lending a hand to others with their own projects. I started to get into the spirit of the evening, lending my own advice and opinions, although very often I was proved wrong. Alas I was surrounded by new technology, and a new programming language, so I’m not surprised that I was no help.
So despite not being any help myself, I really was intrigued by some of the projects others were doing, from controlling a Lego NXT robot, to taking pictures using a webcam and controlling an Arduino Uno, to just trying to connect it to the internet.

I really can’t wait for my Model B RPi to arrive so I can start playing with it, and of course I’ll update on here with my progress.

The Raspberry Jam is in no way affliated with the Mozilla Space or the Rapsberry Pi Foundation. Raspberry Pi is a trademark of the Raspberry Pi Foundation.